5 July, 2024
Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and coffee devotee from New York. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize + Best of the Net, and has appeared in numerous publications, including The Penn Review, Birdcoat Quarterly, Sky Island Journal, and Feral Poetry. He can be found on Twitter and Instagram: @dannyjbrennan
5 July, 2024
Marisa P. Clark is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection Bird (Unicorn Press, 2024). Her prose and poetry appear in Shenandoah, Cream City Review, Nimrod, Epiphany, Foglifter, Prairie Fire, Rust + Moth, Sundog Lit, Texas Review, and elsewhere. Best American Essays 2011 recognized her creative nonfiction among its Notable Essays. A queer writer, she grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, came out in Atlanta, Georgia, and lives in New Mexico with three parrots, two dogs, and whatever wildlife and strays chance to visit.
5 July, 2024
A. C. Silva is delighted to make her non-fiction debut in Qu Literary Magazine. Her short stories have appeared in The Bangalore Review, Add to Cart Magazine, and Splash! by Haunted Waters Press. She is currently pursuing her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she lives with her loving partner and her cat, Bowling Ball.
5 July, 2024
Lara Boyle is a writer based in North Carolina. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Nonfiction at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Her writing has appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, Business Insider, The Jerusalem Post, and more. She writes about the intersection of queerness, Disability, and Jewish identity.
5 July, 2024
Brecht De Poortere was born in Belgium and grew up in Africa. He currently lives in Paris, France. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Hudson Review, Grain, X-R-A-Y, The Baltimore Review and Consequence, amongst others, and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @brecht_dp or visit his website www.brechtdepoortere.com.
5 July, 2024
Herb Zarov began his career teaching American Literature at Smith College, and, after a career adjustment, went on to practice law for four decades at a large international firm. Since his retirement in 2019, he has been writing fiction. His stories have appeared in Jewishfiction.net, The Great Lakes Review, Scribble, and On the Run, and have been chosen as finalists in the 2020 Pinch writing competition and the 2022 Bellingham Review Tobias Wolff Short Story Competition. Zarov has also published a scholarly article on John Milton in the Milton Quarterly and several articles on cutting edge theories in American tort law. He lives in Northbrook, Illinois.
8 February, 2024
and a tenderness swept over my skin for the man
who knew my thighs, all fathappy, in younger years.
We were good, ya know, sometimes.
And here he was oblivious to my observation—
for a swift, floating moment—we were alone again:
me watching, he not noticing. The thing
we once had, sinewtorn by vultures, briefly
parted the clouds. He sat in the sun.
8 February, 2024
and bring wax. I’ve used all of mine even
fogged holiday candles. I’ve burnt
a string run through hard fat from my bacon.
Please. Or I’ll be forced to rob bees at knifepoint
and politely collect their products for months.
Please bring a crystal ball. I asked around
but no-body carries anything round in their palms
or chest since you’ve gone. Please bring pictures
of your mother and sisters, there aren’t enough
here to render or read or eat from. Bring my voice
asking at an older age or any sound you decide.
But bring a watch and paper and map it out. Pass over
like a comet or pass through like a note between fingers.
Just bring any oranges and your compass. You never owned one
but please bring one and name it, make it your own.
I have to insist you bring your hours
and your purse and hand-foods
and your perfume
and your
and you
and
8 February, 2024
That moment before grief destroys us,
We sit eating the sweetest melon,
Not knowing the sweetness until
Much later, when the first grade
Is empty-eyed, everyone
Alone now as we are overtaken
Without knowing it yet,
Thinking this cannot be
8 February, 2024
Before you opened the bag, Sex
could’ve been something sleek, a jaguar or puma,
but it turned out to be a scraggly orange cat
who leaves messes and claws at strangers
and yowls for attention all through the night.
Spend enough time with Sex and you
no longer hope it’ll fix anything;
it’s just another problem stalking
through the house, hissing at your friends.
There’s no peace if you don’t feed it
and the more you feed it, the bigger
and meaner it gets; you try to stuff it back
in the bag but the bag is too small and the cat
is too big and it hates you. This is the story
of everything you’ve wanted: inside each bag
another cat, be it Love or Art or Purpose—
they mewl their demands, bite each other,
and scratch your feet; they leave you
many brightly colored birds, lifeless and matted
on the living room floor: offerings
or threats, you can’t be sure.